How the Supreme Court Is Erasing Consequential Decisions in the Lower Courts

Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional design,  Dr. Stephanie Lindquist, writes in the New York Times about the recent action taken by the Supreme Court to neutralize lower court decisions

By Lisa Tucker and Stefanie A. Lindquist

Ms. Tucker is an associate professor at the Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law who studies the U.S. Supreme Court. Ms. Lindquist is a professor of law and political science at Arizona State University and the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Design at the university’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.

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Reasoned opinions by the federal appeals courts on issues ranging from voting rights to Donald Trump’s border wall have been wiped from the books, leaving no precedent for the lower federal courts to follow. Legally, it is as if these decisions by the appeals courts, one rung below the Supreme Court, had never existed. The Supreme Court’s final, unilateral exercises of power in these cases have gone largely unreported.

Stefanie A. Lindquist Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Design at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.